The activists who tried to destroy a biotech trial are unscientific hypocrites, says Mark Lynas, a former crop vandal himself

A
s one of the locals told me breathlessly, last weekend’s attempted vandalism
of the genetically modified (GM) wheat at Rothamsted Research in Harpenden,
Hertfordshire, was “the most exciting thing that has happened in this town
for a long time”. But it still wasn’t very exciting.

A motley gathering of fewer than 150 Take the Flour Back activists trickled
into Rothamsted Park with their bike trailers and wheelbarrows, listened to
some protest songs and anti-capitalist speeches and then trickled home
again. Even with their ranks swelled by a bus-load of anti-GM types imported
specially from France, they had no chance of breaching police lines to
attack the crop as promised.

This was just as well. As a former GM crop vandal myself, I can vouch for the
fact that Take the Flour Back is entirely misguided. Its opposition to
biotechnology is ideological: no amount of scientific evidence can shake its
near-religious